U.S.Transparency

Friday, January 6, 2012

Here's my letter (below) in response to last month's White House request for input on "best practices and metrics" for Public Participation as it relates to its Open Government initiative, esp. as an element of the recent "U.S. National Action Plan".

Basically, in the letter I say that (1) after 3 years of "OpenGov" effort, their standard approach to "public consultation" is much less open than all other federal agencies have been doing for decades prior, and (2) if they are sincere about seeking out the wisdom of experts on this topic, then they are welcome to consult with knowledgeable people at the online forum (an email-list that I moderate) called "OpenGovMetrics".

If they do, then that may be a first because, except for interviews with me on OpenGov Radio, the only time over the past 3 years that I've seen the White House's "OpenGov" team participating in anything like an online discussion is when I watch streaming video of one of them speaking to an audience at a conference or other staged meeting.

Feel free to leave a comment (below the letter) and/or join the email-group for a deeper discussion on the development of standard metrics for measuring progress in "Open Government", i.e., Transparency, Participation, and Collaboration.

This letter is in response to your request on the White House Blog for recommendations for promoting public participation in government, as a part of implementing the U.S. Open Government National Action Plan. You stated:

"Given the focus of this initiative, we thought it would be most appropriate to invite you to provide input and ideas on best practices and metrics for public participation .."

That is, in order to assess the progress of its Open Government efforts (i.e., for more "Transparency, Participation, and Collaboration"), the White House needs to decide on how to measure those three elements. I agree with the AmericaSpeaks report when it says the "Open Government Initiative and most federal agency plans have failed to offer standards for what constitutes high-quality public participation."

The concept of establishing a starting point (baseline) is not hard to grasp. Everyone who's ever been on a diet to lose weight knows that you're supposed to weigh yourself .. in the beginning. The numbers on the weight-scale are in pounds or kilograms (or whatever) that were developed as standard units of measurement. Step on the scale next week so you can see if you're making progress. Some people, of course, don't want to know the truth.

But compared to weight-loss, the "OpenGov" changes in government culture are incredibly slow and subtle, so you shouldn't be relying on friends to tell you when you're "looking good" (which tends to happen anyway when you work at the White House). You need to discern and gather objective proof because, eventually, people (like your Chief Performance Officer) will say "Show me the data."

So how do we go forward from here? How do we, as citizens interested in Open Government, participate in collaborating with you (and others at the White House) in order to come up with some good indicators of "public participation"? Although your blog-post mentions last summer's "extensive consultations with external stakeholders", the truth is that only a couple dozen guests were invited by the White House to a few closed-door meetings for input to the U.S. OpenGov National Action Plan. (Yes, the other 99.9999% of the public was later invited to provide input, but then you never asked for feedback on the draft Plan.)

Simply put, the White House's OpenGov team (OSTP and OMB) needs to "improve its game" when it comes to public participation, e.g., public consultation in the OpenGov National Action Plan (see http://www.opengovpartnership.org/consultation ).

Consider these various levels of government/public consultation (from lowest to highest):

1. No request for public Input prior to Decision.

2. Request for public Input prior to Decision.

3. Same as #2, and also the proposed Decision is offered for public Feedback.

4. Same as #3, and also a summary of how public Feedback influenced final Decision.

5. Same as #4, and additional chances for public collaboration prior to final Decision.

For several decades, federal agencies have consulted with the public (as evidenced in the Federal Register) according to the #4 level. Of course, the President wants to do better than the status-quo, so you are looking for "best practices" (i.e., more of the back-and-forth collaboration between the public and the government).

However, judging from your office's consistent failure to offer up any of its OpenGov draft documents for public feedback, it does appear that, as you said above, it is "most appropriate" for your office to only ask for public input prior to a final decision. That would put you at the #2 level. And if we compared these levels to an "A to F" marking scale, then that means that your "#2 level" of collaboration (over the past three years) equates to a "D" grade, which is two full levels of collaboration below what federal agencies have been practicing (a "B" grade) for decades!

And, even though D.C. is the capital city of Expediency, you will save time in the long-run if your office slows down to learn to the intermediate steps before you can start operating at (and lecturing others about) the top-level "best practices". Appropriately, this will take a some back-and-forth collaborative participation by your office in an open forum consistent with the President's direction for you to "solicit public feedback to assess and improve [your] level of collaboration and to identify new opportunities for cooperation."

As you may know, an email-group (a.k.a. email-listserv) continues to be an easy and effective tool for group discussion since long before the Web existed. Therefore, I have set up such a group to discuss "OpenGov" metrics. I invite you, and any other interested people reading this, to join us in a moderated discussion about how we can develop better, objective ways to measure improvements in Public Participation. I know many experts on that topic, who are not invited to your D.C. meetings, would be glad to share their knowledge there with you and/or your staff.

I hope is that joining the group's discussions will help make for a better U.S. report (i.e., blessed by the organizations below) at the "OpenGov" conference in Brazil this April. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or suggestions.

It is my understanding that President Obama will be making a speech at the United Nations on Sept. 20th about new commitments by the U.S. in the area of "open government". I also understand that you are working on the national "Action Plan", to be released that same day, which will lay out the strategy and methods for fulfilling the President's commitments under the new "Open Government Partnership" (OGP).

The purpose of this letter is to respond to your public request, a few weeks ago, for suggestions in preparing that Action Plan. I realize my suggestions are presented less than a week before Sept. 20th, but I am assuming that your initial version of the Action Plan will be continually improved in light of better ideas and practices. Therefore, please consider the following four suggestions for any future "OpenGov" directions and guidance.

I like you to note that, while the first suggested action is about behavior (of an editorial nature), the other three are concrete actions can be adopted as "specific commitments" of the type that President promised at the U.N. a year ago. And while there are no "silver bullets" for achieving changes in the status-quo, I believe that these actions, more than any other three, will provide the greatest stretch beyond our current "OpenGov" endeavors.

1. Editorial suggestion: Be More Clear about your "Principles of Open Government"

In January 2009, on his first full day in office, President Obama laid out his three principles of Open Government, i.e., Transparency, Participation, and Collaboration. However, after two and a half years, it now looks like that set of principles is going to change.

If we follow the "road-map" of the Open Government Partnership and adopt their "four core open government principles", then "Collaboration" will be removed, and replaced by "Accountability" and "Technology & Innovation". (Shouldn't that last one count as two? But, then, is "Technology" a principle?)

If that is correct, then it looks like a significant shift in your OpenGov philosophy will need an official explanation. Otherwise, many people (especially government employees) will be confused when your existing Open Government Directive, along with the various OpenGov Plans of federal agencies, is changed to show that the set of basic principles of Open Government principles can be unilaterally changed every few years.

(Okay, now I can see why "Collaboration" would be de-emphasized.)

2. Transparency Commitment: Give People Better Choices about Public Involvement

Thanks to modern technology, we can receive a stream of electronic notices about all sorts of events that interest us. But, to avoid being overwhelmed by too many notices, we each try to create a stream that contains only those notices of personal importance to us.

Every year, about 50,000 public notices are issued by federal agencies in which they ask the American public for their opinion about a specific action being proposed. That works out to about 1,000 notices per week which, I'm sure, virtually no one would want to receive in their email in-box. (FYI: Only 10% appear in Federal Register.)

Fortunately, technology does allow us to receive only those notices that match our personal interests. We can be informed about only those jobs that match our talents, and only those people who match our social or professional interests. Unfortunately, this technology has not been used to inform us about those government proposals that we really would like to know more about ... so that we can participate before a decision is made.

Concrete Action: In order for any citizen to receive a customized stream of public notices, their government should require that every official notice to the public be made available in a standard format that allows that notice to be electronically located according to pre-selected criteria.

3. Collaboration Commitment: Make It Safe for Government Workers to Suggest Changes

As a former federal employee who worked at five different agencies, I know from experience that the only way to make it safe for government workers to propose ideas about saving money (or to simply point out waste) is to have an online system that allows them to express an idea BUT hides their true identity. (The existing Inspector-General system does NOT do this.)

Public Engagement and Accountability are improved when government employees work in an organizational culture of openness in which they feel safe in expressing their thoughts and professional opinions with both their co-workers and members of the public ... without fear of repercussions.

Concrete Action: Every government employee should be given access to an electronic system -- like those already required by federal law for large corporations -- which allows that employee to raise a concern or suggestion to other employees about the operation of their agency without fear of his/her identity becoming known.

In President Obama's Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, he says (3 times) that federal agencies "should solicit" public input and feedback about improving their OpenGov practices.

However, your offices (OMB and OSTP) did not ask the public for feedback about your "Open Government Dialogue" in May/June 2009. In fact, from all the online experiments in public engagement by the current White House over the past two years, precious little has been learned because there has been no organized survey from those who participated. The only forethought has been, at best, to give out an email-address to receive anecdotal comments. Consequently, there is relatively little data to show any difference in Transparency, Participation, or Collaboration since your offices' efforts began January 2009.

Concrete Action: Every citizen should be offered a simple, standard checklist in order to provide feedback about the quality of any public meeting or online event that they attend. Those results would create an objective survey as to the public's judgement with respect to that event's Transparency, Participation, and Collaboration. A compilation of those surveys would, then, reflect an entire agency's or government's progress (or lack thereof).

I hope that this letter has given you something of interest to consider. I'd be interested in any feedback that you may wish to share, written or verbal. Anyone reading this letter may also comment on it (anonymously, if they wish) at my blog at http://www.UStransparency.com as posted on September 16, 2011.

P.S. Two years ago, at your request, hundreds of citizens earnestly suggested their ideas to you in the "Open Government Dialogue" to help you develop the Open Government Directive. Five months later, you issued the OpenGov Directive with virtually no explanation of your consideration about many of the serious ideas. So it really should come as no surprise to you when the public's disappointing response to your new request reflects their discouragement from before. Maybe you should go back over those previous ideas with "fresh eyes" to see if any of them have gotten better with age. http://tinyurl.com/p4yueq

Monday, January 24, 2011

It's been two full years since President Obama signed his Open Government Memorandum for federal agencies to be more "Transparent, Participatory, and Collaborative."

At the halfway point in the President's term, this is the obvious time for the most serious assessment as to what progress is being made with the Open Government Initiative.

Two years is plenty of time to experiment and, as a result, learn what parts of your past actions are working ... and what parts are not working as you had hoped.

Having spent 25 years in D.C., I know that this latter part (i.e., public admission of any sort of unsuccessfulness) is a very difficult thing for almost all government people to do ... especially when you work at the highest levels of the federal government in Washington.

It's the part of "how Washington works" that, ironically, is supposed to be changed by the Open Government initiative. Citizens know certain things that Government does not. Therefore, Government should more inviting of Citizens to share that knowledge, so that Government can make better decisions. But yet, we complain when Government admits cluelessness.

And that's the dilemma.

Government officials are paid to be "smarter" than unpaid citizens. How would it look, for example, if the Secretary of Education admitted not knowing something that was obvious to an ordinary teacher or parent. And what if that was happening over and over? For whatever reason, there is a general expectation that the people in Washington are there because they are (supposed to be) smarter than the rest of us "ordinary citizens".

Therefore, for government officials, there is a dangerously gray area between (A) being more open-minded by considering information and ideas from "ordinary citizens", and then (B) admitting that, hey, a lot of their own information and ideas are not as good as those of "ordinary citizens".

As such, we should not be surprised to see government officials, after testing what they think are the best ideas, consistently declining to discuss and, therefore, learn from those aspects that did not work as they had hoped. This is particularly ironic for OpenGov experiments because the whole idea is to open-mindedly search (with no guarantee of success at every step) for better ways to collaborate with those outside of government.

Here's what the President's Memorandum said about that:

Collaboration actively engages Americans in the work of their Government. Executive departments and agencies should use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperate among themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector. Executive departments and agencies should solicit public feedback to assess and improve their level of collaboration and to identify new opportunities for cooperation.

So, after of various collaborative exercises over the past two years, has the OpenGov leadership (i.e., in OSTP and OMB) been "walking the talk" of soliciting feedback on its experiments in citizen collaboration? Let's see.

After the White House's "Open Government Dialogue" (May-June 2009), were participants asked for their feedback on what worked and what didn't?

Nope.

In early 2010, federal agencies (including the White House's OMB and OSTP) hosted online forums for citizen collaboration on development of agencies' Open Government Plans. Did they follow-up by asking citizen participants for feedback on what worked and what didn't?

Nope.

Now, the same officials who asked -- twice before -- for citizens' ideas and collaboration on Open Government have come back once again with ExpertNet (December 2010-January 2011). Will they now comply with the President's Memorandum about soliciting feedback on collaboration?

Based on their track record, and the absence of any mention about soliciting any feedback about the ExpertNet platform, it appears the answers will, once again, be "Nope."

And, in addition to consistent neglect in asking for citizen feedback, here's another example of OpenGov leadership failing to "walk their talk": they rarely participate in their own collaboration events!

Government officials must actively participate in each consultation for the public to trust in the relevance of the process. Citizen participation demands government participation. To demonstrate that public feedback is vital for sustaining public engagement and interests, government officials must collaborate and the system should define their role clearly.

So when a participant, Tim Bonnemann, asked questions about some unclear aspects of ExpertNet, the White House's "OpenGov"people in charge of the site not answer him there. Instead of responding to Mr. Bonnemann in ExpertNet's discussion area, they posted a partial and indirect "response" in a totally different location (i.e., on the White House blog)!

I won't go into it in this posting, but there are plenty of other examples of how the White House's OpenGov initiative, despite cool new tech-tools, is operating in many significant ways as LESS "transparent, participatory, and collaborative" than the federal agencies that they are trying to change.

It's been two years of "self-evaluation" for OpenGov, so it's way past time to start following the President's original task to ask the public to evaluate his administration's OpenGov efforts.

I compare it to the people who convince themselves that their new diet is really working but, yet, they don't want to step on the weight-scale to learn the objective truth. They'd rather just "self-evaluate" themselves by looking in the mirror.

After two years, OpenGov should be modelling the opposite of "Ignorance is bliss.".=====================Short URL for this posting:http://bit.ly/ghByVa

NOTE: This is just a placeholder blog-post. I will be providing additional links, etc. before showtime on Saturday at 4:00 pm. I am doing this so that my subscribers will know that there is a show at that time .. one hour after the Rally to Restore Sanity is scheduled to end on the National Mall.

In the meantime, take a look at this national news-wire article. It shows the connection between Saturday's rally and how increase the public's engagement in the direction of their government (in addition to simply voting every couple years):

excerpt --

"This event, while originally intended for jest, could possibly become a 'turning point' ... in our nation's history for having immense impact on how political discourse is engaged in the future," the writer and actress wrote on the event's Facebook page this week. "You have created a political movement, intended or not."

A.Post a Comment/Question on this Blog at least one hour before the show begins. Scroll down to "green box" (below) and click on "Comment". It must be concise, and focused on the Open Government Initiative (or else it will not be approved). Commentors can choose to remain anonymous.

C. Call-in "live" to (917) 388-4210 with your comment/question. However -- The host will ONLY "go to the phones" AFTER all the posted Comments (see green box, below) have been addressed. Callers are welcome to add/ask a "follow-up" to those posted Comments.

"When you are transparent, you create better results and relationships because others understand your thinking. People always are trying to find the meaning of actions, especially leaders' behaviors. When you fail to be transparent, you increase the chance that others will come up with their own theories about your intentions and motives - theories that often will differ from yours.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

President Obama wants federal agencies to be "transparent, participatory, and collaborative".

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA; aka "National Archives") is responsible for maintaining federal documents (transparency) and uses the Federal Register to publicize federal proposals that are being offered for public review and comment (participation/collaboration). It has been doing this since 1936.

I'm Stephen Buckley, your host on OpenGovRadio, and my guest for this week's show will be Ray Mosley, Director of NARA's Office of the Federal Register. We'll be talking about the recent launch of "Federal Register 2.0".

Never heard of the Federal Register? Then you need to watch this intro video:

A.Post a Comment/Question on this Blog at least one hour before the show begins. Scroll down to "green box" (below) and click on "Comment". It must be concise, and focused on the Open Government Initiative (or else it will not be approved). Commentors can choose to remain anonymous.

C. Call-in "live" to (917) 388-4210 with your comment/question. However -- The host will ONLY "go to the phones" AFTER all the posted Comments (see green box, below) have been addressed. Callers are welcome to add/ask a "follow-up" to those posted Comments.

"When you are transparent, you create better results and relationships because others understand your thinking. People always are trying to find the meaning of actions, especially leaders' behaviors. When you fail to be transparent, you increase the chance that others will come up with their own theories about your intentions and motives - theories that often will differ from yours.

11. From the developers at GovPulse.US:
"GovPulse was built to .. open the doors of government to the people they work for. By making such documents as the Federal Register searchable, more accessible and easier to digest, GovPulse seeks to encourage every citizen to become more involved in the workings of their government and make their voice heard on the things that matter to them, from the smallest to the largest issues."

Monday, July 19, 2010

Six months ago, in January, I started up OpenGovernmentRadio as a way to have a weekly, real-time discussion with the interesting people who are doing interesting work to make our government more "transparent, participatory, and collaborative." (Are you new to "OpenGov"? See links below.)

Using the "talk-radio" format, I invited guests to come on my one-hour show to talk about what they are doing in the Open Government intiative of the Obama administration. We also browse through "OpenGov" and related websites while the show's listeners follow along with us, and then we take questions and comments from listeners who have left blog-comments and/or call-in "live" to the show. (It's really fun, and the hour always flies right by.) The archives of past shows can be found in the column to the right.

I scheduled the OpenGovRadio show for the same time every week ("Tuesdays at 2)", so that my listeners would be able to set-aside time to listen (and call-in) to the show. However, I find that this is not as beneficial to people as I thought it would be. With everyone's (including potential guests) schedule always in flux, along with the fact that people can opt to listen to the show's recording later, I've decided to arrange and announce the upcoming show on an unscheduled, semi-regular basis.

So what does that mean?

I still plan to do the shows on weekday afternoons (because 11am Eastern is only 8am Pacific, etc.) while, at the time, shifting from a weekly show to one about every other week. And the flexibility will make it much easier, of course, for potential guests to choose a show-time that fits their schedule.

Also, because many of my invited guests are representing their government agency, the extra time for scheduling is useful for most agencies' Public Affairs Office because it appears that they each operate with different procedures for dealing with the public (including "the media"). And so, I never quite knew how long it will take for my invited guest to get "approval from Public Affairs".

But the most interesting thing that I've learned is what often happens when I am talking with the people in the Public Affairs offices in the various federal agencies. After they tell me their procedures for deciding if someone can come speak with "the media" (e.g., on OpenGovRadio), I then ask if these procedures are written down for me (or anyone else from the public) to see. The most common response is "Gee -- umm -- our Public Affairs procedures? Written down? Uhh, I don't know."

Now, that type of response raises a red flag with me .. for two reasons.

First off, as a former management auditor with the federal government, it was often my job to find out "what went wrong" to create a failure. So when people would tell me that they did follow the rules but that they "are not written down", then the main reason for the problem starts to become clear.

Secondly, here I am, talking with the Public Affairs office in a federal agency, trying to get information about how they plan to improve their Public Engagement practices. But, while their new "Open Government Plan" talks about how they really, really want to do that in the future, they can't show anybody the existing rules for how they do things now! (OMG!)

No organization can improve on the way it does something unless it understands (i.e., can show to others) what it is doing NOW! (And, yes, the same thing applies to personal improvement.)

So now, I'm thinking that I may have to submit a Freedom of Information request in order to get a federal agency to divulge its current procedures for public engagement (aka, "open government").

Ironic, huh? So, if you want to keep up with my next step, you can subscribe-by-email to this blog by using that feature in the right-hand column.

But, in the meantime, I'd like to hear YOUR perspective on this or any other OpenGov topic. You can leave a comment below (anonymously if needed .. as a former fed, I understand why). And if you've read this far, I want you to know that I will be hosting OpenGovRadio tomorrow (July 20th) at 2:00 pm ET, but the invited guest is YOU! I want to hear if YOU have anything -- a question, comment or suggestion on "Open Government" -- that YOU want to discuss.

You can do that in either (or all) of three ways:

1.Post a Comment/Question on this Blog at least one hour before the show begins. Scroll down to "green box" (below) and click on "Comment". It must be concise, and focused on the Open Government Initiative (or else it will not be approved). Commentors can choose to remain anonymous.

"When you are transparent, you create better results and relationships because others understand your thinking. People always are trying to find the meaning of actions, especially leaders' behaviors. When you fail to be transparent, you increase the chance that others will come up with their own theories about your intentions and motives - theories that often will differ from yours.

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